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It was early in the morning when Liko woke up. Sprigatito had climbed onto her chest and started meowing in her face, trying to wake her up. It was hungry and Liko was taking a while to wake up and feed it. Liko grumbled as she blinked her eyes open. Her head felt so weird. Like she was lightheaded but also having a headache at the same time.
“Mmm, Sprigatito… What time is it?” She looked at her Rotom phone and realized it was already 8:30 am! Usually she would wake up at 7:30.
“Gah! I slept in!” She quickly sat up, Sprigatito jumping off her chest. She threw her plushy to the side and started to get changed. However, as she tried to get her shorts on, she swayed and her vision blurred before she suddenly fell to the floor.
“Liko, you okay?” Dot was right outside her door when she heard a crash. She was worried and knocked on the door, hoping her girlfriend wasn’t seriously injured.
“Uh, yeah! Be right there!” Liko blinked the rest of the black and blurriness from her vision and put her jacket on. She tried fixing her hair a little before she opened the door. Even though she stuck by being true to herself, she still wanted to look somewhat presentable.
“What happened?” Dot asked.
“I just stood up too fast and fell, nothing to worry about,” She explained, her voice sounding a bit hoarse, “Why are you outside my room?”
“I just came to check up on you. You don’t normally sleep this late,” They said. She took note of her voice though and frowned. ‘Is she sick?’ She wondered
“Well, no need to worry, I’m fine. I just couldn’t get to sleep last night,” Liko lied. She didn’t want Dot to worry. She already worried about her a whole lot, she didn’t need more things to worry about. She’d try to keep this mask up as long as she could.
“Hmm, alright, well, breakfast is ready,” Dot said. Just the thought of breakfast made Liko nauseous. She has already woken up with a mild stomach ache, she didn't need to worsen it.
“I think i’ll skip, i’m not feeling too hungry,” She excused, “I need to work on my essay for school anyways,” she stepped out of her room, closing the door behind her after her pokemon starting running towards the kitchen for breakfast.
“Okay, but better eat something today.” Dot kissed her cheek, making Liko’s face more red than it already was due to her small fever. They were still very new to dating so small things like that got her flustered.
“Hm, you feel warm…” Dot mumbled.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, have a good breakfast!” Liko hurried off to the elevator so she could go work on the deck.
Once she got to the upperdeck, she let out a sigh of relief. She knew she wasn’t feeling well, the sore throat, hot flashes, and nausea explained themselves, but she wasn’t going to tell the crew. She was going to make more trouble for everyone and they already dealt with a bunch of problems from her, they didn’t need more. Sprigatito looked up at her with a disapproving look and meowed.
“I’ll take it easy, alright? They don’t need to know anything,” Liko told her feline friend.
While everyone ate, she worked on her essay for school. It was a little hard to pay attention due to her headache being worsened by the bright sun. It made her head throb and ache, the harsh light in the sky causing it to be that way. But soon she decided to take a break and looked for Cap to see if she could train with him. Maybe some physical exercise could help.
After looking for a while, she found him and Friede in the cockpit. They were discussing where else they should try going and exploring when they saw her enter.
“Hey, Liko. Did you need something?” Friede asked once he noticed her standing there.
“Yeah, I wanted to see if I could train with Cap?” She wondered.
“Do you want to, Captain?” Friede asked his partner.
“Kachu!” Cap said, nodding. It had been a while since he trained with them.
“Alright, I’ll call up Dot to see if she wants to join and Orla if she wants to ref it. Roy is still in school and you’ll need someone else who’s not biased because they’re your girlfriend to ref it” Friede said, pulling out his Rotom phone.
‘Well crap,’ Liko thought to herself. She wasn’t necessarily trying to avoid her girlfriend, but it would be better if she didn’t make her get anxious too often. But there was no way she could avoid Dot coming to the training so she’d just have to deal with it.
“Great.” She replied and headed to the battle court on the upper deck with Cap.
They waited there for a little while until Orla and Dot came up from the elevator. Dot had brought both Tinkatink and Quaxley but would just be using the water type for the battle. She wasn’t exactly used to Tinkatink yet.
“Alright, you two, you’ll be trying to land a hit on Cap before he can tire out your Pokemon,” Orla explained. Dot and Liko got ready in their positions with their Pokemon out in front of them. They waited to see who would strike first and it appeared that it would be them.
“Quaxley, use pound!” Dot yelled. Quaxley ran up to the pikachu, its wings glowing as it rushed. It tried to hit, but Cap quickly dodged and used Thunderbolt. It was super effective against quaxley and it was shot back to Dot.
“Sprigatito, use quick attack!” Liko commanded. The grass cat meowed and sprinted towards Captain Pikachu but he used double team and made Sprigatito hit the wrong Pikachu. Quaxley saw this and started hitting as many copies of Pikachu as it could with water gun until there was only one left.
“Use magica-” Liko’s command was interrupted by a coughing fit. It was a really bad one too. She couldn’t stop heavily coughing as she struggled to get air in. she wheezed and hacked until she was on her knees.
“Liko!” Dot ran to her side and Orla paused the match. Her girlfriend started patting her back, trying to help her breathe. Within a couple of seconds, the coughing fit stopped and she was left breathing heavily. That fit had made her headache practically turn into a migraine. It felt like Tinkatink was beating her head with a large metal hammer. She whimpered as she fell into Dot’s arms. She liked being held by them.
“Orla, go get Mollie,” Dot told the woman. She nodded and hurried off to go grab the pokemon nurse.
As Liko’s headache and stomachache got worse, all the pokemon, Quaxely, Sprigatito, Tinkatink, Sprigatito, and Pikachu, gathered around the couple. They were all worried, especially since Liko was clearly in pain. She whined and snuggled into Dot, trying to get comfortable and gain some of her warmth.
Mollie came over within a couple of minutes and immediately kneeled down in front of Liko. She began examining her and asking her questions, trying to figure out what caused her to end up like this.
“What hurts Liko?” She asked.
“Mm, head, throat, tummy…” Liko whimpered. Mollie looked over at her, concerned. She took out a thermometer and placed it under her tongue. Once it beeped, she took it out and read the temperature. It looked like a pretty decent fever.
“Orla, can you carry her?” Mollie looked over to her friend.
“You know I can!” Orla took her from Dot’s arms and picked her up.
“She needs to get back to bed. She’s ill,” Mollie explained, putting on a mask and handing one to Dot.
Dot followed them all the way to Liko’s room, where she had to step outside so Liko could get changed into her pajamas. But right when she was done, she was by her bedside. She would not be leaving Liko’s side for a second. Even when Mollie needed to place the cold pack on her forehead, she didn’t let go of her hand.
“You know she’s not dying, right?” Mollie said to Dot.
“I know that! I’m just worried…” Dot told her, bouncing her leg.
“Try not to worry too much, okay? We don’t need another person to get sick from overworking,” Mollie told her, patting her shoulder as she stood up to give the two some time alone.
When the nurse left, there was a calming silence that filled the room. The only noises heard were sprigatito’s soft purring at the foot of the bed and small whimpers coming from Liko. light peeked through the blinds and flooded gently into the dark room.
“Dot?” Liko spoke up.
“Yeah?”
“Can you come cuddle with me please?” she asked. Being sick and vulnerable always made her feel quite clingy when she wasn’t resisting help, especially now that she had a girlfriend.
“You sure?” Dot blushed, clearly a little flustered. Liko nodded.
Dot, still with her mask on, climbed into bed with her lover, holding her against her chest. They usually would switch between big spoon and little spoon, but right now, Liko needed her to be big spoon.
“Mm, you’re amazing, Dot,” Liko mumbled.
“N-no worries, Liko,” The purple haired girl said. She massaged her head to help her headache so she could get comfortable enough to fall asleep. She didn’t expect to join her in dream land though.
Murdock came by during lunch to deliver some soup for Liko when he opened the door and saw his niece and her girlfriend, asleep in bed, snuggling. He set the soup on the nightstand and smiled.
“These kids grow up so fast,” he wiped a tear from his eye and left the room, giving them some space to rest.